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Production

Devilman Crybaby will be available in over 190 countries with nine spoken languages and subtitled in 25 languages. Science SARU studio headed by Masaaki Yuasa will be directing the series, Ichiro Okouchi writes the script, Eunyoung Choi serves as animation producer, while Aniplex and Dynamic Planning will be producing the project. This project also marks Go Nagai's 50th year as a creator.

Plot Summary

Akira Fudo learns from his best friend Ryo Asuka that demons will revive and reclaim the world from humans. With humans hopeless against this threat, Ryo suggests combining with a demon. With this, Akira becomes Devilman, a being with the power of demon but with a human heart.

Agwel, Ghelmer, Sirene, Kaim, Zennon and others all now have human skins, something that was present in sequels, but never the original manga.

Numerous elements of present-day society are discussed in addition to the themes present in the original manga, including personal identity, sexuality and racism.

The war between Devilman and Demon kind is shown as well as the extinction of human kind.

Akira Fudo's parents are alive prior to him becoming Devilman.

The character of Mico, from the original manga, is split into two characters within the series- one is Miki "Miko" Kuroda and the other is an unnamed character who makes a cameo appearance in the last episode.

A few thematic elements from Devilman Lady are present, such as a strong inference of the timeloop, the meta usage of the Devilman manga and TV show existing in universe and Miki Kuroda's character having parallels to Aoi Kurosaki.

Ideas that were present in the autobiographical Gekiman such as Akira's strong lust brought on from his transformation and rape of Sirene were adapted in Crybaby.

A lot of elements from the first volume of the manga are cut, such as the Demon Mask and Illuge and Texsch's attack. Interestingly, Ryo's speech about the nature of demon kind is used, but not until the tail end of the series.

Jinmen possesses Akira’s father and slaughters everyone on an airport shuttle rather than possessing a train guard on a high-speed train.

Massami Izumi is replaced by the Makimura family cat Tako, with the feline serving the same role as she did in the final episode.

All the Demons including Devilman himself, have yellow blood instead of red.

Trivia

This marks the very first time, in over four decades, that the character Ryo Asuka is featured in an official anime series. Prior to this, Ryo Asuka had almost exclusively appeared in OVAs until now.

This is Atsuko Tanaka's second time to be voicing Sirene, since she previously voiced her in the Playstation 1 adaptation of Devilman.

The 70's Devilman TV series is featured within the universe of Devilman Crybaby as an actual anime. The original opening theme has also been redone with a new musical score.

Psycho Jenny's design is highly influenced by Yasushi Nirasawa's figure design, from the colour pallet, arm fins and breasts on her back. Similarly, is Ghelmer thought the similarities are not as strong.

Noteably, this is also one of the very rare occasions where Psycho Jenny and Zennon die on-screen.